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"The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, "the light of common day." We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things."
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Exlpore more Wonder quotes
"I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do."
"Over the drop, a luminous pond lay below them like a pale magic lantern. It was as if the moon had plummeted into the water and smashed open. Engulfed in darkness, with only a scatter of stars above, the place felt like a bright secret " something ancient and precious."
"As once the winged energy of delightcarried you over childhood's dark abysses,now beyond your own life build the greatarch of unimagined bridges.Wonders happen if we can succeedin passing through the harshest danger;but only in a bright and purely granted achievement can we realize the wonder.To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,and being swept along is not enough.Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions...For the god wants to know himself in you."
"When I'm 60, maybe, I'll look at my pile of papers and wonder, What really happened that year?"
"If a man's imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dreams."
"I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?"
"From without no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves unless some interior responding wonder meets it."
Explore more quotes by Gilbert K. Chesterton
"I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums."
"The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason."
"When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude."
"But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty."
"The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side."
"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."
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